Wonderfully offbeat film!

Excellent, a Must See

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

different places and cultures and emotions. and the freedom as the common axis. dramatic and subtle and bitter and honest. a film about the desire and duty and answers only as sketches. it is one of movies who becomes, scene by scene, a kind of mirror for the viewer. for the hypothesis and shadows and tension and the pieces of a drama who seems be so familiar. because it is not only a story about the search of a girl in the middle of a different world. but a definition of the contemporary society and its borders. so, a story about love and meets and the portraits of illusory happiness. useful. maybe, ass diagnosis.

German screenwriter, producer and director F Akin's fifth feature film which he wrote and co-produced with Andreas Thiel, Jeanette Würl and Klaus Maeck, is the second part of a planned trilogy called "Love, death and the devil" which was preceded by "Head-On" (2004). It premiered In competition at the sixtieth Cannes Film Festival in 2007 and is a Germany-Italy-Turkey co-production which was shot on location in Hamburg and Bremen in Germany, in Taksim and Kadiköy in Istanbul and at the Black Sea in Trabzon in Turkey. It tells the story about Ali Aksu, a widowed and retired Turkish immigrant who lives in Bremen. One day Ali meets a Turkish prostitute named Yeter whom he grows affectionate about. Ali is looking for a partner and offers Yeter to pay her the same amount that she earns working at the brothel if she comes to live with him. Yeter agrees and moves in with Ali, but after having met his German son, a professor who lives in Hamburg, Yeter gets into an argument with Ali that leads to him being sent to jail and his son traveling to Istanbul in order to find Yeter's 27-year-old daughter Ayten whom he thinks is a student. Acutely and engagingly directed by filmmaker F Akin, this humane and compassionately narrated fictional tale which is set in Germany and Turkey during the early 21st century, draws an incisive portrayal of a young Turkish woman who is searching for her mother, the relationship between a German professor and his father and the relationship between a German student and her mother. While notable for it's naturalistic milieu depictions, the fine production design by art director Sirma Bradley and production designer Tamo Kunz, cinematography by Swiss cinematographer Rainer Klausmann and editing by English-born film editor Andrew Bird, this humorous, tragic and romantic story depicts several studies of character and examines themes like family relations, cultural clash, forgiveness, death and love. This universal, character-driven and finely tuned European film which has the lives of six characters intertwining, contains a fine score by German DJ Shantel and is impelled and reinforced by it's fragmented narrative structure and the empathic and involving acting performances by Turkish actor, playwright and producer Tuncel Kurtiz, Turkish-German actor Baki Davrak, Turkish stage and film actress Nurgül Yesilcay, Turkish-born German actress Nursel Köse and German actress and singer Hanna Schygulla. A multifaceted and invariably moving drama which gained, among numerous other awards, the award for Best Screenplay at the sixtieth Cannes Film Festival in 2007, the European Film Award for European Screenwriter at the 20th European Film Awards in 2007 and the NSFC Award for Best Supporting actress Hanna Schygulla at the 43rd National Society of Film Critics Awards in 2009.

I just watched this film on the BBC iPlayer without knowing anything about the film or the director. I'm so glad that I actually took the time to see it. It overflows with human emotions, ranging from anger to romance, grief and forgiveness; an amazing story, as true as real life with characters that you can easily connect to which are brought to life by an exceptional cast. The film itself contains some spoilers that I originally thought were annoying but you then realise that the way the film is structured and the way the plot unfolds, are all elements a very cohesive output that is both creative and compelling. In terms of photography, I really loved some of the shots but I do not think that this was a priority for the director; and rightly so because the pace, story and emotions are so strong that I think any emphasis on photography would have took something away from the experience. Overall, a very nice surprise for me that will definitely make me watch some of the director's other films. Highly recommended.

With a small scale ensemble cast, The Edge of Heaven examines several themes through the lives of the many characters. Nejat Aksu (Baki Davrak) is a professor of literature in a German university and not happy about his father Ali's new live-in partner Yeter (Nursel Köse), a prostitute who Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) has hired to stay with him. Yeter has an estranged daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) who Nejat decides to track down in Turkey after a tragedy occurs in the family. However, unbeknownst to Yeter and Nejat, Ayten has already traveled to Germany to look for her mother and seek a refugee status as she is a member of a rebellious activist group in Turkey. In Germany she meets a female student Charlotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) who offers her a place to stay and eventually follows her back to Turkey, much to her mother Susanne's (Hanna Schygulla) chagrin.The two main story lines (those of Nejat / Yeter and Ayten / Charlotte) are presented after each other in a clear manner but the stories intertwine in many ways, often unnoticed by the characters, creating an extra feel of tragedy – the answer would be so close if only they knew each other! Besides the smaller instances of bad luck, the deaths of major characters are what end up driving the plot forwards, but in the end the message is hopeful; an understanding is what everybody is ultimately seeking.Akin's calm direction and the good performances throughout easily raise The Edge of Heaven among the best Turkish films I've seen (even though I have only seen a handful). The themes of finding one's true calling in life, the forgiving nature of parent–child relationships and the subpar human rights situation in Turkey are all explored without haste, always maintaining the balance between the different aspects of the story. For anyone who hasn't seen many Turkish films, The Edge of Heaven could be a good starting place, but I imagine it is also worth seeing for those more familiar with the country's cinema.